"We’re going to call her ’Pemipai Joy,’" announced my friend Paoring.

A rather unusual, perhaps even strange, name for a baby girl, I thought.

"In my language it means ’My cup runs over with Joy,’" he continued.

"That’s lovely," I said sincerely.

In contrast, my parents, teetotaling Adventists, chose my name because they thought it was "pretty"; it never entered their minds that my name is derived from Dionysus, the god of wine.

People in the ancient world had an attitude much like Paoring’s—the meaning of a name mattered. And, as we read this week’s lesson, we note that many people lived up to their names.

"Ahab" means "Father’s Brother" or "Quite the Father," perhaps a reference to similarities he shared with his father, Omri.1 According to 1 Kings 16, "Omri did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did more evil than all who were before him" (v. 25), and "Ahab, son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him" (v. 30).2

Yes, he was similar to his father. Urging him to greater evil (1 Kings 21:25) was Jezebel, whose father, according to Josephus, was a priest of Astarte and Baal and had "killed his royal predecessor at Tyre to gain kingship over all the Phoenician cities."3 She, a true daughter of her father, believed in the absolute right of the monarch and in the worship of Baal.4 The Phoenician word upon which Jezebel’s name is based is zbl, "prince," and she ruled Israel with an iron hand.5 Perhaps she can even be seen as a prototype for Machiavelli’s The Prince.

We see Ahab’s evil and Jezebel’s harshness in 1 Kings 21. The story begins with Ahab’s statement to Naboth, "Give me your vineyard so that I may have it for a vegetable garden" (v. 2). In all fairness, we must note that he offers Naboth a better vineyard or cash; however, Naboth would not have seen this transaction as a simple exchange of property. A grapevine requires "a decade or more before the beginning of significant production," and survives about half a century.6 Naboth and his family, perhaps for generations, had been cultivating the vines, training and pruning them. They probably sat in the shade of the vines, plucking the fresh fruit in the summer, thinking about the raisins and grape syrup that would sweeten the cold winters, and planning to make wine to drink or trade.

Ahab wanted to take this well-loved vineyard and turn it into a vegetable garden where he could grow food that takes only a few months to sprout and mature. He was willing to uproot Naboth’s long established past to grow something much more ephemeral—and not much valued in Israel.7

Naboth’s reply illustrates how this demand affronted him: in an oath he stated, "The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance" (1 Kings 21:3). Naboth knew he was not free to trade away his land; it was his ancestral inheritance, something that God commanded his people not to sell. (See Lev. 25:23.)

Jezebel, the despotic ruler, was upset with a subject who acknowledged the requirements of God rather than the demands of the monarch. She orchestrated Naboth’s death, but with consummate art managed to appear innocent to her subjects and to her husband. She wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with Ahab’s seal. These letters instructed the elders and nobles to have Naboth, the man who obeyed God’s instructions, accused of cursing God and the king, and then stoned to death (1 Kings 21:10).

The men did "just as it was written in the letters." In the course of three verses, the narrator states three times that Naboth was stoned to death (1 Kings 21:13–15); however, Jezebel made absolutely no mention of the manner of his death to Ahab. "’Go,’" she said, "’take possession of the vineyard of Naboth;…for Naboth is not alive, but dead’" (v. 15). Listening only to Jezebel, we might assume that Naboth had died of natural causes, but the narrator made her guilt crystal clear. 8

Surprisingly, Ahaziah, the son of these rulers, who often put themselves higher than Yahweh, had a name which means "Yahweh has grasped"; however, this young man had not grasped the fact that Yahweh ruled in Israel. After a bad fall, he sent messengers to Ekron, a Philistine city, to inquire of the god Baalzebub if he would be healed.9 Along the way, the messengers encountered Elijah.

Elijah, whose name means "Yahweh is my God," had, throughout his life, illustrated the power of his God. Ahab and Jezebel had seen Yahweh’s power at Mt. Carmel; they had also heard the oracle from God, spoken by Elijah, stating the manner of their deaths; Jezebel knew that Ahab had died as God and Elijah had predicted. Their son Ahaziah, who obviously worshipped and respected a Philistine deity, was grasped and crushed in the hand of Yahweh for his disregard of Israel’s God (2 Kings 1:3–4, 16).

What’s the importance of a name? Well, I hope not much, when I consider my first name: I don’t want to be thought of as a goddess of wine. But I bear another name: I am a Christian, and I want to live up to this name, to reflect the characteristics of Christ "the anointed one." Because I am an anointed—a royal—child, I should be Christ-like: competent, caring, compassionate, innovative, and helpful.

Several years ago I attended a conference that was filled with professional jealousy and backstabbing. Scholars were not just disagreeing over theories and interpretations, they were also viciously attacking each other and the student attendees. As Alice and I walked to a meeting, she said, "You’re a Christian, aren’t you?"

"Yes," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"You act differently from most of the people here. It’s nice to be around you."

That’s the way I want to live—with my life reflecting Christ’s name.

Notes and References

1. H.B. MacLean, "Ahab," in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, ed. George Arthur Buttrick et al. (New York: Abingdon, 1962), 1:61.
2. All biblical references are to the New Revised Standard Version.
3. E. B. Johnson, "Jezebel," in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982), 2:1057.
4. D. Harvey, "Jezebel," in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 2:906.
5. Johnson points out that the Masoretic text changes the meaning of the word to zebel, "dung," which creates a word play on what happens to her body. (See 2 Kings 9:37.) Throughout the story, Jezebel lives up to the depths of her name.
6. David C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age, The Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series, 3 (Sheffield, Eng.: Almond, 1985), 227.
7. Oded Borowski, on pages 135–39 of his book Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1987) suggests that vegetables were held "in low regard in Israel" and cites several Old Testament passages to support this idea.
8. See Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books), 77–78.
9. Many commentators suggest, with varying degrees of certainty, that the name of this deity might be read "Baal-zebul," the life god of Syria. For example, see Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, in The Anchor Bible: II Kings (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 25; H. B. MacLean, "Ahaziah," in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1:66; Norman H. Snaith, "Exegesis" of "II Kings," in Interpreter’s Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick et al. (New York: Abingdon, 1954), 3:189; and John William Wevers, "The Second Book of the Kings," in The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, ed. Charles M. Laymon (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1971), 197.

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